


"Oh boy, I'm so happy about our legal system!"

by TwilightKnight17



Series: Shuake Confidant Week 2018 [7]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Crack, M/M, Post-Canon, impossible amounts of crack, there's really no excuse for this, you're responsible for this and you know who you are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 09:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16513481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightKnight17/pseuds/TwilightKnight17
Summary: The great Thief of Hearts is on trial, and it’s turned into a much bigger mess than anyone was anticipating.[Post-Canon AU]





	"Oh boy, I'm so happy about our legal system!"

**Author's Note:**

> November 4th, Day Seven: Conclusions/Betrayal/ **Justice?**
> 
> (As a note, please picture the judge as the one from Ace Attorney, because no one else would tolerate my level of legal bullshit. XD)

If there was one thing Niijima Sae had never expected, it was that she would one day become a defense attorney and that her first client would be the leader of the notorious Phantom Thieves.

She also never expected that the trial’s primary evidence would be, of all things, hours and hours of Youcube videos.

The Phantom Thieves of Hearts had gained incredible popularity very quickly in part due to the videos documenting their antics, posted under the username ‘Thief-of-Hearts’. While there was nothing concrete in the videos, since anyone without a mask was kept carefully off-camera, the videos told a rambling tale of monsters and mayhem as the Thieves made their way through what they referred to as ‘Palaces’. Sae, of course, knew all about what was actually going on, but having to present the videos before a judge and jury as part of the quest to prove that Akira hadn’t done anything worth going to jail for? Mortifying. Especially considering that the comments counted as evidence.

“So, Kurusu-kun, you are testifying to the fact that there were nine Phantom Thieves, and you were the leader?”

“As the video shows,” Akira said, gesturing at the oversized TV that had been brought into the courtroom. There was a Youcube video on the screen titled, _“Exploring the Pool Deck! Who falls in the pool?!”_

> _The camera panned across a young man in a fox mask sitting on a bench in a glittering hall._
> 
> _“And here we have Inari, sketching the promenade instead of helping us with the map,” a girl’s voice said. It was the same voice that had been narrating the videos since the aftermath of the Pyramid._
> 
> _“Joker is not helping either,” the artist said calmly, never taking his eyes off the sketchpad._
> 
> _The camera panned across the rest of the Thieves and the map they were huddled around before focusing on Joker, dangling from a chandelier. “And here we have our fearless leader, on the chandelier, AGAIN.”_

The video went on to show them actually finding the pool deck at last, and Skull launching himself into the pool with a scream of “CANNONBALL!” The prosecutor paused it, and Akira smiled.

“See? Nine.”

“And what do you have to say about the fact that one of them appears to be a cat?”

He blinked innocently. “What, me? People do tell me that I’m very catlike. It was a running theme in the comments for a long time.”

The prosecutor frowned. “I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about the small cat creature that can be seen in almost _every video_.”

“Your honor, this argument has already been resolved in the comments. Mona is our ninth thief, and I am a cat.”

The judge glanced at Sae, who sighed and reluctantly pulled up the comments on the video.

>   * Hey, I’m new here, but is one of the Thieves a cat?
>   * What, Panther? No, she’s a girl.
>   * No, the CAT
>   * The only cat on the team is Joker.
>   * pet the Joker!
>   * Yeet the Joker into the pool!
>   * petition to paint the joker pinkest pink
>   * Fox can paint him!
> 


Sae, looking like she would rather be anywhere else on the planet, sighed. “As you can see, the comment sections have long since determined that Joker is in fact the cat on the team. There was a brief debate during the Pyramid Palace about whether Panther also counts, and eventually the answer was determined to be no, she and Fox are just…’furries’.” She glanced down at her notes, and concluded, “There was also a brief period where the commenters were obsessed with petting Joker, which peaked when ‘Skull’ petted him on-camera and nearly crashed the video’s page with the number of comments.”

The prosecutor scowled. “We have a witness to the fact that Kurusu Akira has a cat, which is most likely the ninth Phantom Thief. The prosecution calls Senaka Midori to the stand.”

A plain-looking boy with brown hair settled in the witness box, and the prosecutor nodded. “Tell us your relationship to Kurusu-kun, Senaka-kun.”

Midori looked confused. “I sit behind him in Kawakami-sensei’s class.”

“And were you aware of his criminal activities as a Phantom Thief?”

“Uh, yeah, our whole class was.”

“And you never told anyone?”

Midori scoffed. “ _No_. They took out Kamoshida. The whole school owed them. Honestly, the most criminal thing he ever did was smuggle his cat into school when it wasn’t even an emotional support animal.”

“Senaka-kun, is that not the same cat as present in these videos?”

“What? There’s no cat in the videos. I’m not even sure that’s Kurusu in those videos. I’ve never seen him on a chandelier in my life. Anyway, Kurusu’s cat was called Morgana, and the person in the videos is Mona.”

The judge spoke up then. “If Mona is not a cat, what is he?”

“Well, technically Mona is humanity’s hope,” Akira huffed. “But you guys got confused about the whole cognition thing, so I tried to dumb it down.”

“Humanity’s hope looks like a cat?” one of the jurors asked.

“Uh, duh. Have you _seen_ cats? There’s a reason half the internet is cat videos.”

The jury mumbled among themselves in agreement. The judge dismissed Midori, who still looked confused, and announced to an agitated courtroom, “We will now call in an expert. Detective Akechi Goro, who pursued the Phantom Thieves for the better part of a year. Welcome, Detective Akechi.”

Goro, who had been watching from the audience for the trial so far, got up and approached the bench. “Your Honor.”

Sae met his eyes; he looked equally exasperated and amused with the proceedings. “Detective Akechi, in your expert opinion, do you believe that the Phantom Thieves’ actions were criminal?”

“I do not,” Goro said firmly. “They stopped Shido Masayoshi, who was a far greater threat to Japan than they ever were.”

“Detective Akechi,” the prosecutor said, “if you would kindly watch this clip...” He pulled up a different Youcube video, which showed a shadow knocking down Crow, followed by Joker charging it with his bare hands, yelling, _“That’s my WIFE you bastard!”_

“Is this video accurate?” the prosecutor asked Akira, who nodded.

“Well, yeah, that is my wife.”

The prosecutor turned back to Goro. “Detective, numerous theories were made suggesting that you were the ‘Crow’ present in later videos, mostly based on your identical hairstyles, which also implies that you are in fact Joker’s wife.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Goro said. “Joker would be _my_ wife if that were even remotely plausible. You think that I have time to work, maintain perfect grades, and be a wife? In what world? We can’t even be legally married at our age. Have some common sense.”

“But you do know Kurusu-kun, yes?”

“He works part-time at my favorite cafe.”

“It’s true,” Akira chimed in. “It’s like he lives there. He’s always there.”

“Kurusu-kun always has my coffee ready when I arrive, which is further evidence that he would be the wife if we were in that kind of relationship, which we are not.”

Sae stood silently off to one side, trying not to laugh. Or cry. It was easier at this point to just let them run this insanity to its conclusion.

“Would I not be a very doting husband?” Akira asked, batting his eyes at the detective.

“You’re fussy, know how to cook, and you look better in an apron. You’re the wife. All of your friends have called you ‘team mom’ at some point.”

“Your Honor, this is slander. That’s Queen, not me.”

“Objection sustained.”

“He can’t object, he’s not a lawyer!”

“Let’s just move on,” the prosecutor said. “Detective Akechi, I will be blunt. Are you the Phantom Thief known as Crow?”

“No, I’m Akechi Goro.” Goro smiled his brightest TV smile.

“It’s true, he is,” Akira added.

“No one is suggesting that you are _not_ Akechi Goro; we’re asking if you are _also_ Crow.”

It was the greatest soap opera the jury had ever seen. The jurors were hanging onto their every word, riveted by the drama unfolding as Akira said, “I hope he’s Crow. Then he would be my wife.”

“So Detective Akechi insists that Kurusu-kun is his wife, and Kurusu-kun insists that Crow is his wife, and these are supposedly different people…” The jury had somehow obtained a corkboard and were slowly covering it in the newspaper scraps and string that marked any good conspiracy board.

“Don’t make me try to kill you again,” Goro threatened.

Akira smiled placatingly. “Goro, honey, we can talk about this later.”

“We will talk about this _now_ , since you decided to have a video of you calling me your wife at this trial,” Goro huffed, and Akira glanced at Sae.

“Uh…”

“MOVING ON,” Sae said loudly, before the jury could notice that he’d just admitted he was in the video. “Kurusu-kun, we have a video where you supposedly defeat a god to save Tokyo. How did you obtain the power to defeat this god?”

“Friendship,” Akira said casually. “Technically the god gave us part of it, too, but he was a dick so we shot him. We killed god with our inner demons.”

“Kurusu-kun,” the prosecutor said, exasperated, “we need the truth.”

“That is the truth. It’s not my fault that you can’t handle it. The truth is that I’m Satan, and I shot god. With Satan. Using all the sins of humanity. It was all very dramatic.”

“...what.”

“See, you don’t understand. We’ve done this how many times now? I couldn’t make this up if I tried.”

“Kurusu-kun, are you attempting to get off on an insanity plea?”

“No, but I don’t know what else to do to get you to believe me.”

The prosecutor looked at Goro. “Detective Akechi, what do you think of Kurusu-kun’s assertion that he’s Satan?”

Goro laughed. “It’s accurate. Have you _met_ him?”

The people watching the trial were a mixed bag of reactions at this point. No one was sure whether to take any of this seriously. There had been hours of Youcube videos of the notorious Phantom Thieves acting like idiots, and now the testimony was equally nonsensical.

“This is outrageous,” someone grumbled.

“God, I know, I haven’t laughed this hard in _years_ ,” someone else replied. “I think I’ve gotten abs from this.”

“Detective Akechi,” the prosecutor said, trying desperately to keep control of the situation, “would you please describe how Kurusu-kun is Satan?”

“Don’t get me started,” Goro said bluntly.

Akira laughed. “He’ll talk about it all day if you let him. And he tries to say he doesn’t love me. Have we confirmed that he’s my wife yet?”

Sae sighed like she was trying to blow down the courthouse. “Kurusu-kun, you claimed to shoot god, I don’t think anyone cares who your wife is.”

“I CARE. IT’S GORO.”

“Shut _up_ , Akira!” Goro snapped from his place on the floor.

Akira looked like he was about to argue again, but then he brightened. “I forgot to talk about the secret blue room!”

“Oh no,” the judge and Sae said in unison.

“There were two scary children and an old man with a big nose in there. The man turned out to be god and the two kids were a nicer kid in a frilly dress.”

“Kurusu-kun, are you implying that god was impersonating a goblin? _Why?_ ”

“To manipulate me into falling.”

“For your wife?”

“No. Well, sort of. He wanted my wife to win the game so the world would end. God wanted one of us to kill the other and we got married instead. It’s not that complicated.”

Everyone in the courtroom fixed Akira with a deadpan look. The judge, looking very tired, said, “Have you _heard_ yourself speak today?”

Akira raised an eyebrow, having the nerve to look annoyed. “Yes, for several hours now. I could have been flirting with my wife and I’ve been doing this instead.”

“Akira, you haven’t _stopped_ flirting with me since I was called up here,” Goro huffed.

“Ha! You admit you’re my wife!”

One of the jurors glanced at the conspiracy board occupying three of their chairs and suddenly cried, “And that means he’s Crow!”

Goro’s eyes widened. “Wait, NO!”

Akira was grinning. “Oh well. There are witnesses, _honey_.”

_“NO.”_

Sae shrugged. “That’s a pretty damning confession, Akechi-kun.”

Goro made a strangled sound, and Akira leaned forward in the defendant’s box. “Did you not welcome me back when I said ‘honey, I’m home’?”

The judge looked interested. “I’m sorry, he responded to ‘honey, I’m home’?”

Akira beamed gleefully, and the judge slammed down his gavel. “He is definitely the wife in this scenario.”

“That means we’re done, right?” Akira asked, as Goro covered his face with his hands in a desperate attempt to hide his steadily-darkening blush.

“But that didn’t clear up anything about the Thieves,” a juror said.

The judge looked around the room. “Fifteen-minute recess so that Detective Akechi can stop blushing. We’ll reconvene then.”

Sae made her way across the floor to pat Goro on the shoulder. “Congratulations on your marriage, Akechi-kun. Or is it Kurusu-kun, now?”

Goro almost screamed, but before he could, Akira called, “What if I want to be Akechi Akira?”

“That sounds stupid, that’s what,” Goro snapped, but Akira hopped up and came over to join them, ignoring the bailiff glaring at him.

“Don’t be mad, honey.”

Goro sighed, pressing a brief kiss to Akira’s cheek. “I’m not. I’m just wondering how you managed to make everything this big of a mess.”

“It’s a talent.” Akira smiled. “When we reconvene, I’m gonna tell them about how we disappeared from existence for like an hour.”

“...oh god.”

This was going to be the weirdest day of their lives. And considering what they’d already lived through, that was a feat, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: One day, I will properly plot out that glorious Ace Attorney AU that Skitty and I brainstormed. Maybe I’ll even try to learn Ren’py if it’s solid enough!  
> Me: …  
> Me: *writes this load of ridiculousness instead and names it [something dumb](https://youtu.be/HRHn3Ji-iGU?t=517)*
> 
> This is essentially a “what if cameras worked in the metaverse” AU, and all associated insanity. For one thing, Akechi figured them out a lot sooner, which meant more opportunities for them to get him on their side. Don’t think too hard, though. XD


End file.
